


Let them fight

by Scoby



Series: Reylo therapy [9]
Category: Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Alcohol, Bachelorette Party, Braids, Canon Universe, Crack Treated Seriously, Drinking, During Canon, F/M, Fist Fights, Flowers, Jealous Lanzora Garan, Rituals, Traditions, Wedding Planning, Weddings, Wordcount: 1.000-5.000
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-17
Updated: 2020-06-17
Packaged: 2021-03-04 06:08:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,611
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24748855
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Scoby/pseuds/Scoby
Summary: An extravagant wedding despite the First Order – Resistance conflict-----Leia shakes her head, lifts her hand up and tries to push through the Force to get the people separated. The movements of the fighting hands slow down a little but she cannot fully stop them.“Help me”, she urges Ben next to her.“Come on, Mom, let them fight. Think about how much they hate each other. And normally they only see each other through the ship windows. Better to let them blow out some steam.”Then something draws his attention and makes his own fists tighten.“Stars, I want to punch a hole in that pretty face.”He stands up, throws off his cape, rolls his sleeves and strides towards the middle of the hall where Poe has just got Hux folded in half and spitting out a couple of loose teeth. Poe's smile radiates with satisfaction and invincibility.“No, Ben, stop!” Rey runs after him but is interrupted by a blow on the back of her head.
Relationships: Leia Organa & Ben Solo, Leia Organa & Ben Solo | Kylo Ren, Poe Dameron & Finn & Ben Solo | Kylo Ren, Rey/Ben Solo | Kylo Ren
Series: Reylo therapy [9]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1791079
Comments: 3
Kudos: 21





	Let them fight

**Author's Note:**

> It has taken me a long time to decide what would be my favourite kind of Reylo wedding. I've finally come to the conclusion that it would gloriously defy the war circumstances, and maybe get a bit out of hand towards the end...
> 
> This could be a follow up chapter to [this proposal](https://archiveofourown.org/works/24817660).

“So, you want me to organise it?”

“Well, yes… I’m so busy and Rey has never been to a wedding so she doesn’t know what goes into it. And I had understood that you would like it.”

“Of course, Ben my dear, I would love it. I just really wonder, are you sure this is the right time?”

“I love her. She’s everything to me. And she deserves a glorious wedding despite the circumstances.”

“But how are you going to handle it? I mean, I’m happy for you and wish that you have a wedding worthy of songs, but there’s a whole life after that to organise.”

“We’ve thought about it. We’re searching for a house somewhere green. We’ll live there together whenever we can take some time off from… work.”

The choice of the last word makes Leia cringe, so he quickly continues:

“And we expect to stay there more and more over time, and eventually move in permanently. We both believe that this could really be something that would help with finding a peaceful solution to the conflict.”

It is silent and reflective at the other end of the connection for a while. Then Leia slowly forms the thought:

“You have a point there. I just don’t know how to make time for all the arrangements right now. You should know, with everything you keep putting us through, it’s more than a full-time job to run the Resistance.”

“I’ll give you all the time you need. And I’ll make sure there won’t be a single attack during that time. You could focus on the wedding and the whole Resistance could rest.”

He can feel through the Force that she is tempted but still bothered by something.

“I’m pretty short of credits, too. I’ve put a lot of my own savings into the Resistance. And from your father, I inherited mostly debts, which have sucked almost everything that was left.”

“You’ll get an unlimited budget from the First Order reserves…”

Feeling suddenly very guilty about putting his mother through not only an emotional turmoil but also an economic one, he adds:

“…and not just for the event but also for something nice for yourself. A new dress or something you’d like.”

“A ship full of medical supplies for the Resistance would be nice.”

“No, Mom, nothing practical for the Resistance, it has to be a splurge for yourself. That’s my condition. Will you do it?”

“Ok, but I have a condition, too. While I work on the preparations, you have to stay open for this connection. I can’t ask your opinions on details if you barricade the Force between us again.”

“You would just use it as an excuse to talk to me more often.”

“Who would possibly believe such nonsense?”

He feels her smile and the twinkle in her eyes through the Force.

“Ok, I won’t close It anymore.”

She is pulling him into a faint smile of his own.

“It was so nice to talk with you again, Ben. Did I already say that I’m happy for you and Rey?”  
  


* * *

Leia feels the pull to tune into Ben several times every day, now that it is finally possible and so many unsaid things have piled up over the years. But she knows how to stay discreet and only does it every few days, always primarily to ask wedding-related questions, but entwining into those conversations the love for him that her heart is still full of and the wish for him to come back. Ben never openly reacts to anything besides the practical details, but she knows there is nothing he can ignore, now that he has promised to keep the Force open between them.

Now that Leia has the time to throw herself into it, it does not take long for her to finish enough arrangements that they are ready to send out invitations. After some hunting around the galaxy, she manages to track down a dealer of little paper cards and orders them directly to Ben’s star destroyer. He spends a night texting each one with his ornate handwriting.

The cards to be delivered to the Resistance members he passes to Rey through the Force bond. Touching the cards including an actual date makes her smile and shake of excitement, as it sinks into her that their dream is finally really happening.

When she hands each Resistance member their card personally, most of them are not as excited. But seeing how happy it makes Rey and desiring for any kind of break to the monotonous life at the base, they all promise to come.

When the day draws near, Rey and Leia decide to leave a couple of days early to make the final preparations. The evening before leaving, Rey is on her way to sleep when she senses something off in her room. She grabs her lightsaber before opening the door.

Inside, she sees Rose, Kaydel, Larma, Wrobie and Jessika, all crammed into her small room.

“Surprise!”

Rey stares with blank eyes, the lightsaber still hissing in her hand as the only audible sound, until Rose gives a soft signal with her hand that reminds her to put it down.

“Rey, it’s almost your final night as officially single. This is not the time to sleep.”

And they set out to not letting her sleep before the small hours of the morning. Everyone’s home world has its own rituals to do with an upcoming bride, and they go through all of them.

On Hays Minor, the bride’s feet are soaked in a bath with five colourful salts, while she has to sing a song that reminds her about the person she is going to marry. They have to make a raid to the pantry, trying to giggle as quietly as possible, to get the salts – not as colourful as Rose would prefer, but satisfactory. Rey’s song nobody understands, as it is in a Jakkuvian language, but it sounds beautiful and loving and it helps them understand a bit more about the wedding they have instinctively been opposing.

On Dulathia, the bride should eat a piece of every food the couple has eaten together. The list is almost non-existent in Rey’s case, but she remembers one time on this same base, when she was eating duafa fruit from the jungle when the Force bond opened. She makes everyone giggle when describing how Ben made frequent efforts to look away. Still, his eyes constantly drifted back to her, breathing hardening and face blushing as she sank her mouth into one slice of duafa after another, drops of its juice trickling down her jaw.

“Stars, he’s crazy for you. Make sure you have duafa in the wedding. Or even better, in your room after it”, Kaydel points out as they venture into the jungle to find the closest duafa tree. And they pick some to eat right away and a few extra for Rey to take along the next day.

On Warlentta, the tradition is to paint a representation of the emotions she had when meeting her future husband for the first time. Larma and Wrobie are unsatisfied with the supplies available, but manage to mix a few colours out of some wild berries, leaves and soil. Paper is not among the Resistance’s provisions either, but Rey uses the backside of a wedding invitation card to sketch a composition of all the terror and rage she remembers from the forest of Takodana. It makes her chuckle at how the same person has given her both the worst and the best emotions of her life.

Finally, on Dandoran, the bride has to dive in a lake or sea, breath out one bubble for each of her exes and then run around the village or town naked. The dive is easy and quick, as Rey does not have any bubbles to breath out. And she is happy that it is already well past midnight, so she can run around the base with minimal attention. It takes plenty of negotiation, though, to prevent Jessika from waking people up on purpose.

They still spend a couple of hours cuddled up on Rey’s bed so that she can tell everything she loves about Ben and speculate on different alternatives for where to start their life together. She wishes she had realised earlier that she had this kind of friends right around her. Now it feels stupid to have gone through so much pain of trying to keep so many secrets. Once her mouth is open, all the dreams, heartbreaks and joys finally come out, accompanied by a plentiful of giggles and tears.  
  


* * *

After a very short sleep, Rey keeps drowsing off during the flight, until she arrives with Leia on Naboo, landing right next to the Amidala mansion in the lake country. Rey has no idea how a wedding location is supposed to look like, but if gorgeous is the correct appearance, Leia has made an excellent choice. Lake and mountains surround a gigantic but still idyllic villa with a garden full of flowers and fountains.

Most of the following days she spends enjoying the sun and butterflies in the garden, as an army of droids hustles back and forth supervised by an excited Leia, setting up tables and chairs and decorating the whole space. Every once in a while, one of them comes to ask Rey’s opinion about things like colours of the ribbons, altitude of the balloons or positioning of the flower vases, which she does not have much to say about. Only towards the last evening before the wedding day, Leia appears with a different question.

“See what I found on the attic!”

Her arms are full of something white and fluffy. When she comes closer, Rey sees that it is lace - more of it than she has ever seen at one glance.

“My mother’s old wedding dress. What would you say if we’d change the plan and you’d wear this? It’s so beautiful and worn only once before, I think, possibly here in this same place.”

The plan has been for Rey and Ben to not wear anything special, as the guests will just wear their normal clothes since most of them have nothing else. But when Rey sees how Leia strokes the delicately crocheted fabric and when she touches its silky texture herself, she cannot refuse.  
  


* * *

  
The next day, Leia wakes Rey up at sunrise. She has clearly been up earlier, as she is already fully dressed. She has not deviated much from her normal appearance, though, but is still in the same dress that she uses for all the formal duties as a Resistance General. But as Ben insisted, she has splurged on a new necklace with First Order credits. It has a giant gem that reflects the rays of sun on her face in a way that makes her look years younger. For a moment, Rey just smiles and looks at her with sleepy eyes, feeling like the sun itself might have descended next to her bed.

But Leia quickly shakes her fully awake to start the process of getting her into the dress and doing her hair. Leia has hunted throughout the galaxy to find a suitable hairdresser and ordered him to Naboo for the whole morning. Stepping out of his small ship that shines golden in the morning sun, he looks suspiciously young. But several endorsers have assured Leia that he is of Alderaanian descent and she can trust him to master the traditional bridal braiding patterns.

The years of war have made Leia pragmatic and stripped her of most of the superstition learned from her stepparents and especially her stepgrandparents. Still, she could not sleep in peace if her son would get married without the bride wearing the ancient Alderaanian set of six entangled braids circulating the head, each twined in its own distinct pattern to symbolise the quality it brings to the marriage: one for happiness, one for wealth, one for passion, one for connection, one for fertility and one for laughter.

The young hairdresser sets out to work and in the end, he makes even Leia smile and nod with accord. They are ready well on time for Leia to hide Rey inside before the guests start arriving.

Rey can see them in the garden through the window. Resistance and First Order members stick strictly to their own groups, only casting side-eyed looks at each other. Weapons are strictly forbidden in the whole event, so no violence happens, but so does none of the reconciliation that they were hoping for. She sighs and decides to focus on how happy the day will be for the two of them at the least.

Ben arrives with Kylo Ren’s shuttle. It is far from Rey and Leia’s favourite ship, but sure it is the most prestigious choice available to him, and the sight of it landing by the lakeside still makes Rey’s heart jump. She starts revising in her head everything Leia has told her to remember about the ceremony, and every minute of waiting seems to intensify her heartbeat.

Once she gets outside to the garden, she relaxes a little and starts enjoying. The air is filled with elegant music, and she sees encouraging smiles on the faces of all her friends. And when she finally meets Ben between the audience and the most ornate fountain of the garden, he looks at her just like she was eating duafa again. It sends a warm shiver through her belly and probably makes her blush.

The ceremony is long and thorough, led by an old Alderaanian lady with whom Leia was acquainted already when they both lived in that world. Thankfully, she makes it easy and tells them what to do even when Rey would not remember. The part when they burn a branch of wood and sprinkle the ash on each other, in symbolism of eternal and all-conquering love, makes Leia, Finn and Larma cry out loud and almost everyone's eye corners a little bit wet.

The long-awaited kiss happens at the very end. Everyone’s limbs are so numb from sitting that they welcome the opportunity to stand up to applaud. Afterwards, they form an unorganised line that drifts towards congratulating the newly married couple under an extravagant flower arcade.

Leia has made a hopeful sitting arrangement for the dinner, placing groups of a few Resistance members alternating with similar groups of First Order officials. She has hoped that this would encourage people to talk to somebody new, but it does not seem to happen.

Instead, people seem more excited about the wine in the company of their old friends. Everyone’s home world has its own rules about when to drink in a wedding, and the most ambitious guests start following all of those. Glasses are raised every time a bird flies by the window, a fork drops, somebody sneezes or the couple kisses. Especially the last cue keeps making the conversation increasingly drunk and loud.

Finn is describing to Poe, Rose and Kaydel the miseries of his experience with handling the First Order sanitation, when he hears General Pryde’s voice on his other side:

“…and then there are those like FN-2187 who defect, out of fear, and leave their comrades defenceless against the rebel scum…”

For the first time during the whole dinner, Finn turns to him.

“How about we talk about who are defenceless after all of you scum answer for the destruction of the Hosnian system?”

Pryde does not answer, just spits on Finn’s face. He wipes his face with the back of his hand, tightens the same hand into a fist and punches Pryde in the face.

That causes all hell to break loose. Everyone turns to their neighbour whom they have not talked to so far, with their fists up.

Kaydel throws Lieutenant Mitaka out of his chair and starts to blow a set of kicks in his sides. He bites her arm and pulls her hair to distract her, but as soon as she shakes his teeth and hands partly off, her legs get back to work.

Larma and Wrobie attack together another Lieutenant, whose name they do not know and do not care about. They hit his head from both sides, forcing his hands up in protection so that they can punch the air out of his stomach.

Jessika wrestles on the floor with a First Order pilot and manages to get her arm twisted behind her back. That keeps her motionless for a while, until she comes up with rolling her whole body over, throwing Jessika down on her face. She quickly rolls to her side and aims a kick at her before she can jump on her.

Rose pushes another pilot to the wall, locks him in place with a knee against his hips and sets out to making a mess of his face. Once in a while, he aims a punch in Rose’s belly, which causes her to gasp for air and gives him a moment’s break before she gets right back to her task. She keeps screaming and roaring at the top of her lungs, letting out all the rage she has been carrying after her sister’s death.

Leia shakes her head, lifts her hand up and tries to push through the Force to get the people separated. The movements of the fighting hands slow down a little but she cannot fully stop them.

“Help me”, she urges Ben next to her.

“Come on, Mom, let them fight. Think about how much they hate each other. And normally they only see each other through the ship windows. Better to let them blow out some steam.”

Then something draws his attention and makes his own fists tighten.

“Stars, I want to punch a hole in that pretty face.”

He stands up, throws off his cape, rolls his sleeves and strides towards the middle of the hall where Poe has just got Hux folded in half and spitting out a couple of loose teeth. Poe's smile radiates with satisfaction and invincibility.

“No, Ben, stop!” Rey runs after him but is interrupted by a blow on the back of her head.

When she turns around, she recognises Lanzora Garan. Just a few hours ago in the garden, Ben introduced her to Rey as one of his officers and she smiled politely when congratulating them. Now she is spitting at Rey, accusing her of taking the best man of the First Order and aiming a blow from her elbow in the middle of her face. Rey dodges Garan’s elbow and kicks her belly from her side. That bends her over long enough for Rey to look for Ben and Poe again.

She has time to register that Poe’s eye is black, nose bleeding, and he is holding Ben’s arms to get an access to kick his side with his knee. Then she is interrupted again by an arm around her throat and another woman’s hiss in her ear:

“You kriffing bitch, he was supposed to be _mine_.”

Rey pivots around with a raised arm to get rid of the strangle and punches this officer, whose name she has forgotten, in the face enough times for her to back off. When Rey next catches sight of Ben, she notices that Finn has jumped on his back and wrapped an arm around his throat. Ben struggles for a while, trying to shake him off. As it does not work, he bends forward with his whole weight, throwing Finn over his head and to the ground on his back.

Horrified, Rey hurries towards them but two more similar interruptions happen before she can reach them. And when she is finally next to Ben, Poe and Finn, she notices that they are all… hugging.

When they release the hug, she hears Poe say:

“Hey, Bennie, come drop by some time. I mean, not at our base literally, but through the bond thing with Rey. We could all hold hands and have a drink.”

“Yeah, I’ll drop by”, Ben answers and bangs his forehead first to Poe’s and then to Finn’s.

When he turns to Rey, he hurries to take her arm with a worried look.

“What happened to you, Rey?” His cautious hand caresses the bruises on her arms and face. His own lower lip is bleeding close to the right corner of his mouth, and a bump is swelling on his left brow.

“Do you have any idea about how many women in the First Order have been on your tail?”

“Err… No.”

“Well, I’ve fought four of them so far, and who knows how many more of them are here.”

He looks anxiously around, but seeing nobody threatening Rey at the moment, he relaxes and turns back to her. Most of her braids have come off and left behind a messy cloud of dark brown curls. Padmé Amidala’s dress is trashed, with blood stains here and there. It is only held up by few strands of white lace and Rey’s own hands. Ben traces his fingers through a tear that gives straight access to the skin between her breasts and down her belly.

“M-mmh, that’s not for everybody to see. We need to get you out of here. And out of that… what used to be a dress.”

They say good night and many thanks to Leia and leave their guests helping each other up from the floor and tending to each other’s cuts and bruises. Even up to their duafa-smelling room, they can hear the echo of the crowd drinking more, chatting ever louder and singing, now everybody together.


End file.
